The University of Otago Centre for the Book is delighted to announce its 2015 annual symposium in Dunedin, New Zealand’s UNESCO City of Literature. The event will feature an opening lecture by Julia Marshall, an Otago graduate and editor of the very successful children’s publisher, Gecko Press, on Thursday evening at the Dunedin Public Library. Friday will be devoted to panel presentations at the College of Education on the University campus presenting current research on children’s literature.

Abstracts are invited for twenty-minute presentations on any aspect of children’s literature, though preference will be given to proposals focusing on the following themes:

Collaboration (with illustrators, editors, publisher, marketers)

Relationship of form and content: picturebook dualities and constructions of meaning

Role of didacticism in children’s publishing

Reception of particular works, both by critics and young readers

Transmission of children’s titles across time or space

Representations of trauma in children’s literature

Illustrations, binding and advertising of children’s books

Digital media and the future of children’s books

There are no chronological or geographical boundaries to the symposium’s topic: we welcome papers on Aesop, on chapbooks, on Dr. Seuss, on Gecko Press. The language of the conference will be English, but papers on books in other languages are also welcome.

Abstracts of 250–300 words plus a brief biographical statement should be submitted to the conference organisers (books@otago.ac.nz) no later than Monday, 3 August 2015.

Decisions regarding submissions will be made within a fortnight after the closing date.

Following the conference, papers will be eligible for consideration for publication in a special issue of Script & Print: Bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand devoted to the symposium.